Ewa Partum (née Frejdlich) was born in 1945 in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, near Warsaw. She initially studied at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Łódź (1963-65) and then continued her studies at the Faculty of Graphics and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, working under the guidance of Aleksander Kobzdej and Stefan Gierowski. In 1970, she completed her diploma work, which consisted of a theoretical dissertation on concrete poetry and a practical work involving actions with objects from Tadeusz Kantor’s Multipart project.
As one of the first artists in Poland to engage with conceptual art, Partum became known for her performances, films, photography, and visual poetry. Her work played a pioneering role in Poland in the fields of body art, feminist art, and critical art.
Initially, Partum focused on concrete (visual) poetry, and later, she turned to performance art. Her first performances date back to 1971, involving the scattering of letters in public and private spaces and in front of the camera in open-air settings. From 1973, she also worked on avant-garde films, and from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, she concentrated almost exclusively on feminist themes.
Partum is the author of several now-classic actions, not only in Polish art, including Stupid Woman, Women, Marriage Is Against You, Change – My Problem Is a Woman’s Problem, and Self-Identification.
Her first feminist declaration came in 1971 when she pressed her red, lipstick-coated lips onto a sheet of paper, signing it with the phrase: “My touch is a woman’s touch”, a work from the series poem by ewa.
In the 1970s, she exhibited her works at the Repassage Gallery in Warsaw. Before leaving Poland in 1982, she performed her iconic Hommage to Solidarity in an underground gallery in Łódź, during which the naked artist imprinted her lips on a white sheet of paper while enunciating each letter of the word “solidarity.” She repeated the performance in 1983 at the Wewerka Gallery in West Berlin.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Partum revisited her earlier fascinations with concrete poetry.
Her art was revisited in 2006 through two retrospective exhibitions: Legality of Space at the Wyspa Art Institute in Gdańsk and Self-Identification at Królikarnia in Warsaw. In 2007, her work was featured in the exhibition WACK! Art and Feminist Revolution at MOCA, Los Angeles, and in 2008, she was included in the exhibition re.act.feminism at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
Warsaw, Galeria Współczesna, 1971
Łódź, Galeria Adres, 1972, 1973, 1974 (performance)
Łódź, Museum of Art, 1972
Warsaw, Repassage Gallery, 1972 (performance)
Elbląg, Galeria EL, 1973 (performance)
Wrocław, Galeria Awangarda, 1976
Lublin, Labirynt Gallery, 1977, 1981 (performance)
Łódź, Art Forum Gallery, 1979 (performance)
Warsaw, Mała Gallery, 1980
Poznań, ON Gallery, 1980 (performance)
Miastko, International Meeting, 1981 (performance)
Kraków, BWA Gallery, 1981 (performance)
Warsaw, Dziekanka, 1981 (performance)
Łódź, Underground Gallery, 1982
Berlin, Wewerka Gallery, 1983 (retrospective exhibition)
Berlin, Dialog Gallery, 1984 (performance)
Bonn, Museum of Women, 1985 (performance)
Karlsruhe, Badischer Kunstverein, 2001 (“The Act of Thought is the Act of Art” – retrospective)
Gdańsk, Wyspa Art Institute, 2006 and National Museum in Warsaw, 2006 (retrospective exhibitions)
London, Tate Modern, Turbine Hall, 2006
Łódź, ms2, 2014 (retrospective exhibition)
